31 December 2006

Kiss and make up

I used to have a real problem with this kind of stuff, and it really used to get me down. But, since then, I've come to realise two things.

Firstly, you need to realise that the world as we know it is not going to be around forever, whether we like it or not. It is undeniable that the Universe is in a constant state of change, with stars being born and destroyed all the time. Just get your head around that for a second. Can you even imagine that? Can you imagine the Sun being destroyed? Something which is such a fundamental part of our existance not being there any more? Quite probably even swallowing up the Earth in its final stages of swelling before its death? This is Science, and we need to accept it. This particular apocalyptic event is billions of years away, but we need to accept that if something else doesn't get us sooner, this will.

And you know what? After the Earth, Sun, and all that we know is gone, it doesn't make a tiny bit of difference. The Universe is unimaginably big. Utterly, mind-bogglingly, brain-explodingly big. It's older than anything you can comprehend, and will go on for a hell of a long time, too. In fact, it's quite possibly even infinite in time and space, we just don't know. The world we do know is just a tiny, tiny, microscopic piece, in an impossibly big jigsaw puzzle. Your family, friends, pets, house, car, job, way of life - everything you know is just insignificant and unimportant. After it's all gone, the Universe will go on and have many more stories to tell, and that's what I find just fucking amazingly cool.

Secondly, if we are ever going to stand a chance of making the best of our time and not destroying our environment, civilisation needs to get over a few things. We need to put our differences aside, stop fighting each other and get down to getting along.

Without a doubt, one of the biggest hurdles on the path to this utopia is religion. We really need to move on. Of course, many people will disagree, and likely say that I'm as brainwashed as I might claim they are, but in my opinion, as long as people have such fundamental beliefs so incompatible and deeply rooted that they find it necessary to spend their time either "saving" people or blowing each other up, people are never really going to see eye to eye. What chance do we have, then, of fighting for the greater good?

Call me a hippy all you like, but the world really needs to kiss and make up. If it doesn't, we'll be tearing ourselves apart well before global warming ever poses us any real threat.